The European Central Bank’s new banking watchdog will establish a whistleblower system to get tips on banks that may be breaking its rules and will set up independent audit teams to monitor each of the region’s big banks, the head of the agency said.
The ECB is about to take on direct supervision of more than 130 big euro zone lenders in November after the results of stress tests are released late next month. "Personally, I can promise you that our supervision will be tough and fair," Daniele Nouy wrote in a column published on the ECB website and in a number of newspapers. "And we will not shy away from being intrusive if we feel this is necessary."
Mr Nouy said new ECB-led supervisory teams will supervise the banks "on a daily basis" and that generally the leader of each team will not come from the country where the bank is based. "For example, Credit Agricole's chief supervisor will be German, Unicredit's from France, ABN AMRO's from Spain, " Mr Nouy wrote.
“The ECB will also set up a reporting mechanism to encourage and enable people who come to know of individual banks’ potential violation of relevant EU law to report such violations to the ECB,” she wrote. “Such reports are an effective instrument to bring to light cases of commercial misconduct.”
The ECB has begun “supervisory dialogues” with banks this week in which they get partial and preliminary findings of the health assessment of their balance sheets before a formal announcement in October tells markets which banks need to raise more capital and take other steps to bolster operations.
Reuters
